Providing information, education, and training to build knowledge, develop skills, and change attitudes that will lead to increased independence, productivity, self determination, integration and inclusion (IPSII) for people with developmental disabilities and their families.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK--Joseph Bruno, the head of New York City's
Office of Emergency Management, told a City Council committee Monday that his
office would coordinate evacuations of people with disabilities in a disaster
such as a hurricane, but that it would not oversee such evacuations.

According to Tuesday's New York Post, Bruno said the city's evacuation
plan relies on nursing homes and hospitals to provide transportation for their
residents and patients, and would require private agencies such as Meals on
Wheels to make sure authorities evacuate their clients.

Some council members reportedly worried that people with disabilities
and significant medical problems would fall through the cracks in an emergency,
like so many did in the Gulf Coast during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Council Speaker Gifford Miller and others called for Bruno's office to
begin compiling its own list of homebound residents, and to begin overseeing
evacuation drills at hospitals and nursing homes.

The GCDD is funded under the provisions of P.L. 106-402. The federal law also provides funding to the Minnesota Disability Law Center,the state Protection and Advocacy System, and to the Institute on Community Integration, the state University Center for Excellence. The Minnesota network of programs works to increase the IPSII of people with developmental disabilities and families into community life.